Artist review - 40 days with the Wacom Cintiq Companion - Part 5: ArtRage

This review is of ArtRage on the Wacom Cintiq Companion - hopefully useful for artists considering just that combination.

Update: 03 Oct 2014: Please read together with the first comment below, from Ambient Design, the publishers of ArtRage - apparently most of the issues I picked up on are either fixed in the latest version of the software, or are features I didn't manage to find!

My test period with the Wacom Cintiq Companion tablet is close to ending and I haven't managed (of course) to do half the jobs I was hoping to do. I've had a quick play with all of the following software packages and will write some notes on them shortly:

Adobe Creative Cloud - Photoshop, Premiere & InDesign.
Microsoft Office 365.
XenoDream.
ZBrush 4R6
GroBoto.

My main object in trying out the tablet, though, and the one I did manage to fulfil pretty well, was to give a thorough workout to ArtRage. This is the package I've used most in the past, and the one I still intend to use most in the future. For those unfamiliar with it, it's a drawing and painting package for Windows, Mac and iPad which seeks to simulate traditional media, including oil paints, watercolours, pencil, pens, pastels, and more. The result is work which can be more or less indistinguishable from that done on paper or canvas, without the mess and the expense of chucking materials at projects which might not work out!  I love the feeling of being able to try out whatever I want without wasting paper - looking forward to trying it for lightning sketches when I drop in on the undergraduate life-drawing classes at college! I first used ArtRage on an an old PC with one of the first Wacom graphics tablets and then progressed a few years ago to an HP Tx2500 series tablet PC running Windows XP, which I later upgraded to the Windows 8 Beta release.  The combination worked very well, and I was able to do some interesting work, but there were some disadvantages. The old tablet PC touch interface was clunky and unresponsive, and the processing power wasn't up to using complicated brushes like watercolour washes without the marks lagging annoyingly behind the stylus.

The old tablet expired and the new generation of light and fast tablets came along, and I was eager to see how ArtRage would perform in a suitable purpose-built environment, hence when offered the chance to test-drive the Wacom Cintiq Companion for 40 days I grabbed it!

So here we go. It works. End of review. Well, no, not quite, but to me the point about graphics software (and specifically software/hardware combinations) is that it should just do what you want it to do straight out of the package/off the download. Admittedly, as you'll know if you read earlier reviews, I had to upgrade the Wacom to Windows 8.1 and reinstall the tablet driver to get things working well, but that was pre-ArtRage Installation. So I installed ArtRage on the tablet - no annoying licencing issues - once you've paid for it you can install it on all the PCs you own (and Macs?  - as far as I remember one licence covers all). One nice little feature is that you can copy the activation key into the clipboard and when you fire up the program for the first time it automatically pastes it into the right space for you.

Then the user interface appears - none of the problems I had with PhotoShop (the interface elements were way too small, and when I used the 'experimental features' menu to increase the size, they were way too large, as that feature is designed specifically for the Surface 3's higher resolution screen. Variable scaling, please, Adobe… but I digress). The ArtRage interface on the Cintiq Companion's 1920 x 1080 screen was just the right size to use with either finger or pen.

Move straight to drawing on the screen - well, I selected the pencil tool first - the default selection at first startup is blue oil paint … god knows why.  It works - press harder, line gets darker, ease off, line gets lighter. Just what you want. Turn the pen over and scribble with the other end, it's an eraser. Press harder, eraser gets bigger. All good. The tip is very responsive to pressure - I found I had to tweak the settings in the Wacom management utility to get the full range of light to dark. The individual range is going to vary from person to person - evidently I have quite a heavy hand, and I had to experiment a little with the settings to get it just right. One gripe with the pencil tool in ArtRage, though - the Wacom pen sends tilt information to the app, and I assumed this would be mapped to tilt in ArtRage, i.e. that the more I tilted the pen over, the wider the line would become. This doesn't happen - it doesn't use the tilt info. in the pencil tool. Why?? That would seem like a pretty obvious implementation to me. It's not that it doesn't work at all - using the airbrush tool the spray pattern becomes conical if you tilt the pen. All in all, though, the combination of the Wacom pen and ArtRage is excellent. I was able to pretty much forget that I wasn't working with a real pencil on paper and just get on with creating, which is, after all, the goal.

So here's a shot of me working on the first proper drawing I did with ArtRage on the Wacom Cintiq Companion. I already published the complete drawing *here*

Drawing in ArtRage on the Wacom Cintiq Companion

Moving on, what else makes for a good drawing experience? Well, the screen texture on the Wacom is slightly matt, rather than the high gloss found on most tablets, like the Microsoft Surface 3. Imagine drawing with a fibre-tip pen on a piece of the non-reflective glass used for picture framing to cut down glare and you'll get the idea. It means the pen is easier to control and not as liable to skid around. I found it a comfortable surface to draw on, but there are a couple of downsides. Firstly, the screen is not as bright, vibrant and sharp as on a typical tablet. This isn't an issue if you're creating using a pen and drawing using 'natural' media - who cares if a pencil stroke is bright and glossy? It is an issue, though, if you also want to watch movies on your tablet, or edit photos, or videos using Premiere as I do. It's an indication to me that the Cintiq Companion is great at exactly what it's designed for - drawing and painting in the digital domain, but not so good as a general laptop replacement. Secondly, the coating used on the screen is apparently not perfectly scratch resistant. Wacom recommend not using felt nibs in the Pro pen on the Companion, which might be a disadvantage for some graphics professionals. The reason, apparently, is that people who use those nibs tend to press harder, making screen damage more likely. I've never used them, so can't really comment.

The other really important factor for natural media drawing verisimilitude is lag. Is the CPU power of the tablet good enough to render complex brush patterns in real time so your line doesn't lag behind the stylus?  The Cintiq Companion uses a Core i7 processor clocked at 2.7GHz, so the answer should be yes - and it is. The most complex rendering that ArtRage has to do is making convincing watercolour strokes, blending with the colour already on the 'paper' in real time, and I had no problem with this. Here's a drawing I did where the shading on the eyes was first roughed out using a watercolour brush, and it was just like painting on watercolour paper:

"Up Like Wildflowers" : Digital drawing - ArtRage on Wacom Cintiq Companion
Copyright © 2014 by Martin Herbert

One important tip though (thanks to Wacom digital hero type dude David Oduro for this!):  The Windows power management scheme you use is important. When running on battery I would use the 'balanced' or 'power saver' profiles in Windows. In this case you would definitely get very noticeable lag between mark-making on the screen and mark actually appearing. This is because under these power schemes the CPU speed is down-clocked to around 0.9GHz.  For a lag-free drawing experience on the Wacom Cintiq Companion - set the power scheme to 'High Performance'!  CPU speed goes right up and everything is much smoother. Another tip was to go into the BIOS settings and increase the GPU memory window size to 512MB - this will also speed up graphics performance.

The way I work in ArtRage is to set myself up a pallette of colours corresponding to the media I use in real life - sepia, terracotta and graphite pencils and Chinese White chalk and gouache for highlights. Here's a last drawing, using my 'default' toolset:

"A Leg to Stand On (Universal Credit II) : Digital drawing - ArtRage on Wacom Cintiq Companion
Copyright © 2014 by Martin Herbert

... which leads me to another tip. ArtRage has layers just like Photoshop - use them! The chalk tool in ArtRage, even setting the pressure to zero and using as little pressure on the pen as possible, is too heavy for my liking. I got around it by shading and blurring my highlights on a separate layer with opacity set to 50% or so, then merging down layers when I was happy with the results. Reducing the layer opacity gives you the capability to make much more subtle adjustments. (Obviously this doesn't work if you want the colour to blend with media already on the 'canvas'). It's when using layers that another advantage of the Companion becomes apparent - 8GB of RAM means no appreciable slowing down when using layers. I worked on all the drawings seen here at full size (30 x 40 cm) with a resolution of 240dpi, scaling up to 300dpi later for eventual printing, so makes them 2880 x 3840 pixels when working. I was able to use at least half a dozen layers at this size without issue. One slight quirk with ArtRage when working on a canvas this size though - the maximum diameter of the brush tools is quite small - they're designed for a smaller working area really, so if you want to do something expressive with oil or watercolour brushes, I would work small to start with broad strokes, then rescale the canvas to add details later. It's annoying, but the technology still isn't up to A3 paintings in natural rendered media at Retina display resolution with no visible lag. It will be, I'm sure, but give it 2 or 3 years, I expect.

Small complaint - it's necessary to zoom in and out and rotate the canvas quite a lot when working with large files, and the intuitive pinch to zoom and two fingers to rotate methods didn't work well (I was able to get pinch to zoom working by tweaking some settings, but rotate could only be done via the ArtRage canvas tool). This something that Ambient Design, the publishers of ArtRage, could usefully work on. Oh, and … feature request, ArtRage guys - I'd really like it if I could draw with the pencil or chalk tool using the pen, and then blur/smudge using my finger without changing tools - shouldn't be a problem, right? Just detect the change from pen to touch and change the tool mapping accordingly. In the next version, please. (Oh and by the way, I should say all this was done with ArtRage 3.5, so maybe all these issues are addressed in version 4! I'm just a poor artist and can't afford to upgrade right now).

So there we are - if your question was 'how well does ArtRage work on the Wacom Cintiq Companion?' then hopefully that goes some way towards answering the question. I think the Cintiq Companion is probably the best possible platform for ArtRage's natural drawing media, and I guess the same probably goes for other painting packages. I haven't had time try them though, so can't vouch for the experience (Wacom pointed me towards a trial of Corel Painter but I just don't have the time). It seems to me like ArtRage is the best package for painting digitally, and it's amazingly cheap for everything it can do (and this review is just looking at a very few features).  The Cintiq is the perfect Companion for it (cheeeezy!!).

Artist review - 40 days with the Wacom Cintiq Companion - Part 4: A drawing for sale

Update: New revised version - that's more me!

"Is there honey still for tea?" : Digital drawing : 40 x 30 cm : Limited edition of 10
Copyright © 2014 by Martin Herbert

Due to the hardware problems, I'm about ten days behind where I wanted to be in evaluating the Cintiq Companion, but I finally had time to do a drawing using the excellent ArtRage package. I'll be writing an evaluation of ArtRage on the Cintiq shortly, but in the meantime, here's the finished result.

For sale as a signed & numbered limited edition of 10 copies on eBay here -> http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/111451328062. By purchasing you'll be helping pay for my MA in Fine Art at Aberystwyth, which I'm starting next month.

"Is there honey still for tea (detail) : Copyright © 2014 by Martin Herbert

My contribution to the 1914-18 war commemorations I guess - it didn't actually start out that way, I was experimenting with shapes and stencils to see what happened and it just sort of fell out. The title "Is there honey still for tea?" is of course from the last line of Rupert Brooke's poem The old Vicarage, Grantchester. It was written in Berlin in 1912 when Brooke was recovering from an illness, and it is widely held to reflect the idyllic England for which his generation would be fighting only two years later, and which was ironically to all but disappear as a result of that conflict, even though Britain actually 'won' in that struggle.

Edition of 10, individually numbered & signed by the artist

Two years later, in 1914, Brooke wrote what are undoubtedly his most famous lines "If I should die, think only this of me: That there's some corner of a foreign field That is for ever England." He died on St. Georges day 1915 en-route to Gallipoli.

"God! I will pack, and take a train,

And get me to England once again!

For England's the one land, I know,

Where men with Splendid Hearts may go"

Artist review - 40 days with the Wacom Cintiq Companion - Part 3: Quo Vadis ?

Page of notes from 'Bamboo Paper' running on the Wacom Cintiq Companion

You'll recall that the Wacom Cintiq Companion which I have on loan for test and review purposes turned out to have a dodgy audio chip and selfie-cam. The replacement Cintiq Companion (a.k.a. Wacom ) has now duly arrived, and happily all hardware tested OK this time.  I have to say although the audio quality through the headphone socket or via Bluetooth speakers is fine, the internal speaker quality is complete rubbish, a problem which has been remarked on by other reviewers.

Whilst I was awaiting the replacement, I've been messing with some apps just to get the feel of the thing, and now since the replacement arrived, I've installed a whole lot more, including ZBrush 4R6, Photoshop CC and Premiere CC, Cubase, and Microsoft Office 365. I've also got the Reactable music synthesis/sequencer system running under the Bluestacks Android emulator, of which more later, undoubtedly!  I've started working on some of the items in my test plan (above - written in Bamboo Paper with the Pro Pen - nice!).

In the meantime, however, playing with all this stuff has thrown up some odd adjustment stuff ... when Wacom asked me to review the Cintiq Companion I suspect they were not after existential musings, but ... the following is transcribed from a Bamboo Paper notebook page written this morning.

Maybe this is a restart of the 'Artist Pages' (blame Julia Cameron's 'The Artist's Way') which I used to write longhand on my original tablet PC using Windows Journal, or maybe it's just a brief note, but ... Artist's Block is a thing. :-( Hear that?  I have absolutely no idea what to do.

Pick a different colour maybe (note: pen changed colour here) ?  Anyway ... I'm feeling constricted by having to put a piece of computer hardware though its paces, getting more and more anti-tech as I go along. I'm not sure why this should be - I found using a tablet PC before was a liberating experience - being able to experiment with different ideas, styles, even media without wasting a lot of paper seemed to free up some creative impulses which had been bound up before.

This time, since I started using the Cintiq Companion, I feel restricted in how I use my time, having an obligation to evaluate and report, but also creatively, like I just can't bring myself to put 'pencil' to 'paper' for fear that I'm wasting my time - for fear, I think, that I will fail spectacularly at actually producing any meaningful art.

I should just pull myself together. If David Hockney can exhibit 'paintings' made on an iPad, then I should be able to make something useful on this platform which is, after all, specifically intended for artists. So ... here goes - time to fire up ArtRage and attempt something creative.

Artist review - 40 days with the Wacom Cintiq Companion - Part 2: First impressions

Wacom Cintiq Companion in the studio, teamed with Bluetooth keyboard, mouse and speakers

So - it arrived! I now have a Wacom Cintiq Companion tablet on loan for 40 days in return for some testing/reviewing/blogging, so here we go ...

First impressions:

Hardware:

This is where I expect the Wacom Cintiq Companion (OK - can't go on typing all that - for review purposes it's the Wacom from now on, OK?) to excel. After all, it's a premium piece of kit aimed at professional artists and designers, and the pen hardware is specifically the reason I was interested in the first place. First thing I noticed when unpacking was - it's heavy. Understand, my point of reference here is the Lenovo S6000 Android tablet I've been using as a general purpose ideas sketchbook and internet/email device for the last few months. The 10.1"-screened Lenovo weighs 550g, and the 13.3" Wacom 1.77kg. This is not a tablet I'm going to be toting round to use as a general purpose sketchbook. It's immediately obvious that one should regard the Wacom as an Ultrabook which just happens to have a touchscreen instead of a keyboard. It's a Wacom Cintiq which has become untethered from its PC/Mac mothership and is wandering around the galaxy on its own, independently powered by Windows 8, but that doesn't make it a tablet in the same sense as an iPad or Samsung Galaxy Note. Sadly, it's actually just a little too heavy to be able to comfortably hold it in one hand while drawing with the other - best think of it as a portable graphics workstation.

The screen quality, and the response of the all-important pen, are as good as hoped, and it runs the software I've installed so far perfectly ably. Unfortunately, there isn't so much of that because ... problems.  The audio subsystem basically didn't work - no sound output from the headphone jack, and the internal speakers are barely audible even at full volume. I also found that the front-facing (selfie) camera isn't working at all, so - I haven't installed a lot of software for testing yet because it's about to be exchanged for another unit which is on its way from Germany - an unfortunate start to the review period. Guys - if you're going to send out a review unit (and hope I'm going to keep and pay for it at the end) - you should probably have someone systematically test that everything works before mailing it, OK?

One other note about the screen - it's a full HD 1920 x 1080 pixels, which at 13.3" actually means the writing is a tad small for my 57 year-old eyes - I had to increase the text size to be able to use it comfortably, and using the XenoDream interface, which has a lot of little boxes full of numbers to fill in, is a bit of a strain. Not Wacom's fault, but it would be a lot easier if pinch-to-zoom actually worked on the Windows 8 desktop, which it doesn't. Frowny face.

Hardware conclusion - very chunky - not a tablet in the sense of the iPad, but more of a portable graphics workstation. Design is good (the function keys are already coming in useful, and the pen quality really is great, with 2048 pressure levels, 5000+ dpi, and 60 tilt levels). Screen density is a bit high for legacy apps. Build quality - meh. Two return-to-base faults, and I haven't even tested everything. I hope I just got a dud and this doesn't normally happen but rest assured, when the replacement arrives, I will be testing absolutely every port and feature before even thinking about a purchase.

Operating System:

Just a brief note since, as I say, Windows 8 isn't Wacom's fault, but.... why 8?  For an expensive bit of kit, surely it could come with the latest OS and drivers already installed ?  This is a salient point since one of the first things I discovered was that the pen calibration seriously didn't work in portrait mode (others have documented this problem on the net).  Fortunately, upgrading to Windows 8.1 and removing and reinstalling the latest Wacom driver as recommended fixed the problem. The pen calibration is now spot-on and it does indeed remember separate calibration setups for the 4 different screen orientations. This is important since if, like me, you're left-handed, you're going to want to use the machine with the function keys/feature buttons or whatever they're called on the right, since your left hand is going to be busy with the pen ... oh... that reminds me... if you're left handed, don't even think of putting screen brightness on 'Auto'. As soon as you move your hand to the left, it obscures the ambient light sensor which in this orientation is in the bottom left-hand corner, and the screen goes dim. Doh. Maybe a more central position would have been better?

Software:

There isn't any. There, that was easy, wasn't it ? Well, OK maybe there's a bit to say. Wacom's philosophy is that it really is a professional item, not a consumer one, so there's no point in putting in a lot of bloatware which no one wants, as every user is going to have their own ideas about what graphics packages etc. they're going to need. I'm a case in point - I'm a fine-artist, not a graphic designer. I have no interest in Adobe Illustrator or Autocad or most of the things that designers use. I do however use XenoDream quite extensively, and plan to make a lot of use ZBrush and Premiere. I want to write custom software using processing and p5.js and compose weird videos, and I plan on using ArtRage far more than Photoshop. Oh, and sound-art - I need those speakers working, OK? .. for Virtual ANS, MixTikl and Cubase ...

So .... I'm waiting for the replacement hardware before spending a lot of time installing software to test, but in the meantime, the one thing I really wanted to try was Wacom's own Bamboo Paper, just made available for Windows 8 and Android. I had the idea that I would have this instantly available as instant ideas sketchpad and notebook - maybe even use it for lecture notes during my MA course (about to happen in September. Yes, I know, I'm 57. Whatever). Hmmm... it works nicely. I can sketch and write, it feels natural, looks great and apparently there are new creative packs with different papers etc. coming soon which will make it even more useful. Now, let's save my sketch as a picture file. Oh. you can't. There is no 'Save to file' option, only 'share' to other installed apps. Specifically, OneNote and Mail. That's it. Sharing to OneNote is broken - the image doesn't appear in the note. Sharing to mail is OK but ... it's a bit of a clunky way to get a sketch into ArtRage where I need it, isn't it? What happened to 'Save file'?  Now for the notebook. Can I export my notebook to archive my lecture notes - nope. There's no export function either. Bamboo Paper notebooks can only be read in the Bamboo Paper app. Yes, I know, it's not specific to the Cintiq Companion, but seriously ... looks like I'll be using OneNote for lectures.

Conclusions:

Not exactly off to a flying start - sorry Wacom - 4/10 so far. However, I have another 5 weeks or so to get some real software onto the replacement unit and try it out properly, so I have a Plan. I've been commissioned to do a book cover this summer, so I'm going to do it by creating an initial design in XenoDream, refining it in ZBrush, compositing in Photoshop CC, and rendering the finished artwork by hand-painting in ArtRage. That should put the machine through its paces, and most importantly, tell me whether I want to spend some very hard-earned cash on keeping the review model at the end of what Wacom are calling the 'UK Digital Roadshow'. (Note: I'm not in the running to win a free Cintiq Companion as far as I know - I've know idea who are these 'winners' of whom they speak).

More soon!

Artist review - 40 days with the Wacom Cintiq Companion - Part 1

Those who are attentive and have an interest in things technological for artists will remember that some time ago, I published this blog post, a comparative review of Windows 8 tablets that I thought might be  suitable for use by artists who want a pressure-sensitive pen solution for digital drawing and painting. Digital drawing is something which had become a bit of a mainstay of my practice, and which I've been a bit lost without since my old HP Tx2500 tablet PC died a couple of years ago.

Wacom Cintiq Companion

The object of the exercise was to decide which PC to specify in a large project grant application I was preparing for the Arts Council of Wales at the time. The clear winner in terms of functionality was the Wacom Cintiq Companion, which was about to come onto the market at the time. Sadly I didn't get the grant, and the project continues in a much reduced form. I resigned myself to carrying on using a standard non-pressure-sensitive Android tablet for the moment, and possibly getting a much cheaper Windows model like the Samsung Ativ Tab 3 later on…

Moving on a few months, and I happen to notice in passing a competition being run by Digital Arts Magazine.  The winners get a Cintiq Companion tablet (!), and the runners-up get a review unit free for 40 days in return for supplying feedback on its useability for art, with a big discount off the full price if they decide to keep it at the end of the review period. All that is required is my contact details and a link to my portfolio, so I spend 30 seconds filling them in, just entering a link to my website as the portfolio address, move on, and forget all about it. Obviously they are looking for illustrators and graphic designers to assess the product, and aren't going to be interested in a fine-artist specialising in oils and egg-tempera. Some weeks later I get an email from Digital Arts. Sorry, I wasn't one of the lucky few who won a Cintiq outright, but I AM one of the 50 who get a review unit for 40 days - yay!

So - I get my new tablet after all, for 6 weeks, with the option to purchase at a reduced price if I can raise the money in time (on top of getting together the cash for my MA course fees!).  I've just received notice that my new toy has left the manufacturers in Germany and should be here soon, and will be putting it through its paces for the next 40 days, writing about my experiences as I go. It's a timely happening, since apart from fine-art work, I have a book cover commission to do, and 2 website designs to thrash out over the next few weeks. I hope the blog posts will be useful to others who're considering what is, after all, a very expensive purchase for an independent artist (the full price is currently £1,599, so it's got to be worth about three iPads for that!).

So … here goes - a number of blog posts to come about how I get on. If you're an artist who's interested in how the Wacom Cintiq Companion performs in a day-to-day arts practice, please follow the blog (see top right for links). I promise one thing though - no crappy unboxing video!

… oh, and, expect me to try to sell you some art to pay for this thing if it turns out to be as useful as I hope!

Windows 8 tablets for artists – a review

And the winner is ...

I've been deep in the process of preparing a grant application to the Arts Council of Wales for a new project recently. One of the things I want to fund is the replacement of my tablet PC, which after several years and a couple of repairs gave up the ghost at the end of my last project.

The last model was an HP Tx2500 series convertible tablet. It originally came with Windows Vista 32 (in Spanish), it weighed a ton, it had a battery life of less than 3 hours, and it overheated to the point where it was uncomfortable to hold, which was eventually the cause of its demise, as the graphics chip eventually de-soldered itself from the motherboard. I installed the Windows 8 Beta release on it, and it worked great, but I had to get it fixed twice, but eventually decided it was beyond repair and sold it for spares on eBay.

The point was, it had two major advantages – it had a Wacom pressure-sensitive pen for screen input, which meant I could draw on it, and it ran Windows. “Why would that be an advantage?”, I hear you ask ... simple – because my weapon of choice for making fabulous drawings on a tablet is ArtRage, a 'natural materials' graphics package which is absolutely the best thing for drawing on a PC. There is also a version for iPad, but Apple never designed that for a pressure-sensitive pen, so that makes it a no-brainer (that and the fact I want to run Zbrush and other packages on it as well).

So ... the tablet market is changing fast, and I looked for a comparative review of all the available models which might be specifically suitable for artists. Guess what? There isn't one, so.... here we go. Disclaimer – I haven't been able to try these – I'm just comparing features here. It took a while just to compile the list, and it will doubtless be out of date soon, but:

Some of these models aren't yet available at the time of writing (Oct. 2013) but are expected soon, so they're in. The list of features I've included in the table, by the way, won't be relevant to everyone, and is based on things that I've found an irritation in my current cheap Android not-very-arty tablet. The important stuff is there, though – screen size, resolution, CPU, memory, storage space, and price. Remember, the common factor here is – they all have pressure-sensitive pen input. I haven't bothered noting the number of pressure-levels, as my old PC had 512, so pretty much anything is an improvement.

I'm not going to discuss every model in detail – you can go read the manufacturers' blurb for yourself, but I will comment on a few particularly relevant points here:

Samsung ATIV Tab 3

First up is the Samsung ATIV Tab 3. It's just become available, and it gets a special mention because it's cheap and compact. Cheapest (£489) and most compact of all the models here in fact, so if you're on a very limited budget it's probably worth a try. It's basically like a Galaxy Note 10.1 with the Wacom S-Pen – except it runs Windows 8 instead of Android and will therefore run standard Windows 8 software like ArtRage. A very elegant solution as far as I can see. Not ideal in my case – low CPU spec, low memory, and I had the Note 10.1 for a while and found the S-Pen too small and fiddly, and it skidded on the glossy screen. As I say though, if you're on a budget and you'd like a Win 8 sketchpad – this could be ideal.

Panasonic UT-MB5

Let's jump to the other end of the scale – the humongous Panasonic UT-MB5 will be released shortly. It's a Windows 8 tablet with a 20 inch (yes, you heard right) 4000 pixel display. Aimed squarely at architects, car designers and the like who need precision ... maybe it would be great for art, but the pen looks quite big and clunky to me – not sure why it should be. Also, you'll be using it on mains power most of the time as battery life is a stated 2 hours (!). The main disadvantage, though, is the price of £4,500 – I can't see the Arts Council springing for that!

In the mid-range of prices there's quite a lot of choice, and I suspect one is pretty much as good as another with the choice being mainly down to looks, and where you get the fastest CPU/most memory/most storage for your money. The MS Surface Pro is a good bet at £719 for the 128GB model, but wait a bit and get the Samsung ATIV Tab 7 when it arrives and you'll get the same spec. with a bigger screen (11.6” as opposed to 10.6”) for £31 more.

The Toshiba is overpriced, and the HP is under-specced (plus, sorry HP but my previous experiences with your laptops have not been good – see above – and that's sadly not the only example). Panasonic have the extra-tough FZ-G1 on the cards, but it's much more money (£1,800) than similar spec. machines from other manufacturers. If being able to drop your tablet in a bucket of water from a great height and retrieve it unscathed is a priority, it might be for you, though.

The Lenovo ThinkPadTablet 2 looks like an elegant device. It's low-spec, but it's cheap at £540. It's one of a trio of devices with a smaller 1366 x 768 screen (most of the ones above are 1920 x 1080), the others being the Fujitsu Stylistic Q572 and the Asus VivoTab TF810C.

So - given that I'd like a large screen with as high resolution as I can, with decent CPU and memory, I'd pretty much settled on the Samsung ATIV Tab 7 as being the best feature/price compromise... but wait ...... !!!

Just as I thought it was safe .... I happened across this ...

The Wacom Cintiq Companion

... and it was love at first sight. Any artist who uses graphics on a PC knows Wacom as a manufacturer of PC graphics tablets, from the budget Bamboo to the designer's standard Intuos. If you're into design, you are also probably familiar with their Cintiq range of touchscreens – external monitors you can plug into a graphics PC or Mac which give you a write-on screen you can use with the whole super-sensitive range of Intuos pens. Now – they say in response to artists' and designers' not-so-subtle hints, they have released a couple of stand-alone tablets with their 13.3” screen. One, the Cintiq Companion Hybrid, operates as a normal Cintiq input device when connected to your desktop graphics machine, and as an Android tablet when on its own, with some sketchbook-type apps by Wacom themselves for working on the fly. Sounds nice, but ...

The other model, the Cintiq Companion, is a whole new ballgame... because it's a stand-alone Windows 8 tablet which will run things like Photoshop, Zbrush, Maya etc... and my favourite ArtRage – and has the fabulous Intuos pen with 2048 levels of sensitivity, tilt function, and all the other specially-for-artists features of the Cintiq range. Added to that, although the price is predictably quite high (£1,650 – mind you, that's still £150 less than the FZ-G1), the spec. is also higher than all the other tablets examined here. It's the only one apart from the Panasonic monster with 8GB of memory as standard, and 256GB of storage. It's the only one with a core i7 CPU instead of core i5, and it has Wacom's standard productivity devices (programmable physical and on-screen buttons) designed specifically for artists. The point, basically, is that of all the models compared, it's the ONLY one specifically designed for creative visual artists, so the choice suddenly becomes quite simple. I want one. Now.